Not gonna lie: I really enjoyed writing today’s title.
First up, the New York Times’ own Economic Cassandra, Professor Paul “K-Thug/Krugthulu” Krugman, slamming the collective “special snowflakes” that inhabit the New American Aristocracy of the 1%. In a rare “double-whammy” decision, David Brooks agrees with him, to a point.
When Paul Krugman and David Brooks are both going “This is a talented but morally bereft group of people that now control incalculable wealth and power and are totally disconnected from the reality of everyone that’s not them.”, we should all be terrified.
From Wonkblog’s Ezra Klein, 13 reasons why the 112th Congress is literally the worst Congress in American history. Per item #2, here’s a list of things more popular than Congress: the IRS, the Airline industry, lawyers, Nixon during Watergate, banks, the oil and gas industry, BP during the oil spill, Paris Hilton, the US going communist, and Hugo Chavez. The only thing less popular than Congress is Fidel Castro.
Remember how JPMorgan’s chief investment office, which was designed to counterbalance riskier bets elsewhere to ensure the stability of the firm, lost $2 billion after the market turned on the so-called “London Whale”? Well, turns out that that was a wildly inaccurate best-case scenario for the bank, which has now revised those numbers to $5.8 billion, amid evidence that traders had tried to cover-up their collective fuck-up. However, in a sign that the bank isn’t completely bereft of integrity, they’ll be attempting to clawback bonuses and salary from managers and executives involved in the now infamous trade. Of course, they’ll only be bringing in millions in clawbacks compared to billions in losses, so who the hell knows how this is going to end up.
Politco’s Kenneth Vogel and Steve Friess have published an excellent story about Karl Rove’s recruitment of Steve Wynn to become a GOP Superdonor to the tune of $10 million and growing this election cycle. Well worth the read to see how the politically connected recruit the money men to fund their activities in the shadows.
Today we borrow from a terrifically clever headline from the Huffington Post and bring you THE MITTSTORM COMETH, in which we cover what pile of dogshit Mitt Romney has managed to step in today and not yet buy his way out of.
First up, Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi savages Mitt’s speech at the NAACP. Mittstorm Level: 2 – Damaging, but not catastrophic.
Next up, TPM’s Benjy Sarlin reports on the growing chorus of Republicans asking Mitt to release more of his tax records. Based on what we’ve been able to delve from Mitt’s current woeful release, there be gold in them thar hills. The fact that it’s his own people that are doing it too makes it even worse. Mittstorm Level: 3 – Damaging, potentially catastrophic.
And finally, TPM’s Benjy Sarlin reports that “Mitt Romney testified to Massachusetts officials in 2002 that he maintained business ties during his Olympics work, undermining his argument that he had no connection to Bain Capital or related companies after 1999.” Here’s the problem with that: if this is true, Mitt Romney has committed a federal felony by certifying on federal financial disclosure forms that he left active management of Bain Capital in February 1999. Mittstorm Level: 5 – Catastrophic damage.
And that concludes today’s MITTSTORM COMETH.
In other news, remember the debt ceiling deal that Congress struck, where if Congress couldn’t come up with a way to reduce the deficit they’d take a butcher cleaver to the Department of Defense and the Social Safety Net? Well, as it turns out, those “devastating” cuts would still make the DoD budget larger than it was in 2006.
Two Presidents have used their farewell addresses to warn the American people about threats looming on the horizon: Washington, and Eisenhower. Washington said that we should avoid political parties and entangling foreign commitments. Eisenhower warned us of the growing military-industrial complex. Of course, Nixon also warned us that we won’t have Richard Nixon to kick around any more either, but as it turns out we’re still doing a pretty bang up job of that almost fifty years later.
Today in Terrible People: Maine Governor Paul LePage can’t seem to stop comparing the IRS to the Gestapo, and this time intimates that the IRS is going to start killing people.
And finally, proving that I am willing to plumb the darkest, most awful and foul places on the internet to bring you all stuff you probably won’t see anywhere else, I bring you this gem from World Net Daily, the web’s #1 site for frothing-at-the-mouth, just to the left of Stormfront, right wing lunacy: Aliza Davidovit’s “Blacks Should Be Like Jews”, which manages to be horrifically offensive to both blacks and Jews. For those of you that are unwilling to confront the dark places on the internet like I am, let me summarize the article for you: blacks are lazy and shiftless, and should be more like the hardworking Jews. By the way, this article also includes the absolute worst pun I’ve ever read, that somehow manages to be both not funny and terrifically offensive to me personally: “Rosen-colored glasses”.
And that’s all I have to say about that.
